Existing air quality detectors fall into several categories that the inventors believe are inappropriate for the true market of measuring and displaying indoor air quality information to home residents in actionable ways. One type of existing device is an alarm-style device, using ionization of 0.05 micron-sized particles in order to detect nanoparticles in the air that represent smoke. These devices, essentially smoke detectors, present very loud audible warnings in a binary manner and are otherwise completely silent and lacking in user feedback. The second set of existing devices uses Volatile Organic Compound oxygen fuel cell style sensor chips to measure VOC content in the home air. However, these existing VOC sensors lack long-term calibration stability and report on volatile fluents rather than the ultrafine and fine particles that directly damage breathing and cause asthma attacks. Finally, a third category of devices measure Carbon Monoxide and/or Carbon Dioxide. While these molecule concentrations represent staleness of air (e.g. houses with no doors or windows open), these devices also fail to measure fine particulate concentrations that can embed themselves in the lung's alveoli.
In addition to these existing devices, HEPA filters that are used to clean indoor air commonly use dust sensors. However, these sensors are used as-is, with no forced air, and with the stochastic sensor readings only used to regulate air filter fan speed. Little feedback is provided to users in order to enable an understanding of how actions in the home, for instance, can directly impact air quality at an hourly and daily level. In addition, existing devices fail to provide strong uploading capabilities that tie into sharing and review on web-based applications, mobile applications and sharing and community-based problem solving in social media applications.